Oriamendi Matrix: An Engle Matrix Game set in the First Carlist War

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A bloody civil war has waged in Spain for four years. King Ferdinand died and left the crown to his daughter, Isabella, and the power to his wife Cristina. The King’s brother, Don Carlos, has violently contested Isabella’s right to succeed. The main drama to date has unfolded in the north, in the Basque provinces of Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa, and Alava, plus the adjoining province of Navarra.

It is now early March 1837. In yet another bid to to crush the rebels, the three government generals in the Basque provinces – Esparetero, De Lacy Evans, Saarsfield – are preparing a simultaneous advance on the Carlist heartland. They believe victory is assured as Don Carlos doesn’t have enough men to face all three threats simultaneously. The three Carlist commanders – Don Carlos, Don Sebastián, Brigadier Iturriza – intend to show the Cristinos they are wrong.

This Engle Matrix Game for the First Carlist War has been germinating for a long time. The draft appeared on 2 July 2006. Nearly 10 years later I thought I’d better finish it. Partly because Roland Davis wanted me to run it for him, in PBEM mode.

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Missing General – An Engle Matrix Game Battle Report

Missing General Turns 01 to 05

I ran a session of A General is Missing for Chris Harrod (Germans) and Nuno Pereira (Russians). Chris has played Engle Matrix Games before and also this scenario a few years back. It was Nuno’s first experience of this style of game. Chris played well so not too surprisingly he won. I learnt a couple of things about matrix games which I’ll share at the end.

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Wargaming Rules for WW2

There are lots of wargaming rules for World War 2. These are the ones I play: Crossfire, Megablitz, Rapier Offensive and Engle Matrix Games. One day I might write up my thoughts on the competitors, of which there are many.

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What I like in a campaign / multi-player game

My first ventures in campaigns were two large, 12-14 player, Ancient/Medieval DBM Campaigns. One was called Europe 1100 AD and the other Europe 1455 AD. The mechanics were fairly simple being based on DBA campaigns but I quickly found problems and the campaigns petered out when people lost interest. I now favour even snappier campaign rules and less people.

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Engle Matrix Game as a Wargaming Campaign

Hamster Press

The essence of Engle Matrix Games is that they allow you to do whatever you want to, so long as you can make a logical argument. You play a leading general of the period. Each turn you get to make one argument/order about what you want to happen that turn. You can make arguments for your side, to cause problems for the other side, or to change the rules! (No more than one level of rule change.)

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